


"Aww, Virus, No"

by thudworm



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2020 [6]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint's in Quarantine, Deaf Clint Barton, M/M, Mutual Pining, Truth Serum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24163177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thudworm/pseuds/thudworm
Summary: On what should have been a routine mission, Clint is exposed to a pathogen which has the wonderful effect of making him tell the truth, and only the truth. Which is bad news when he's been trying to keep his crush on a teammate a secret.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Tony Stark
Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619530
Comments: 5
Kudos: 206
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo 2020





	"Aww, Virus, No"

**Author's Note:**

> Title: “Aww, Virus, No”  
> Collaborator Name: @thudworm  
> Card Number: 3093  
> Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24163177  
> Square Filled: T5- Truth Drug/Spell  
> Ship/Main Pairing: Clint Barton/Tony Stark  
> Rating: Teen  
> Major Tags: Deaf Clint, Clint’s in quarantine, mutual pining, truth serum  
> Summary: On what should have been a routine mission, Clint is exposed to a pathogen which has the wonderful effect of making him tell the truth, and only the truth. Which is bad news when he's been trying to keep his crush on a teammate a secret.   
> Word Count: 3,538

“Should be simple.” 

Those words would probably be the inscription on his tombstone, at least if Nat had anything to say about. Because whenever he unthinkingly uttered that phrase, the universe seemed determined to prove him wrong, in increasingly absurd ways.

SHIELD had asked the Avengers for their assistance in taking down a cabal of rogue scientists. AIM 2.0 (as Tony had dubbed them) seemed to think the pesky rules most civilized places had about ‘ethics’ and ‘informed consent’ were beneath them. They believed the pursuit of knowledge was more important to their “enlightened” selves than the question of whether what they were actually helping humanity. 

The briefing for the mission had been straightforward enough. Tony’s role was to gain access to their computers and control systems, so the rest of the team could do their jobs without worrying about security cameras or locked doors. All of the research data he uncovered would be sent through for Bruce to assess; because a Code Green in a biomedical lab of questionable intention was a recipe for disaster, and because they needed to know if there was any risk to the civilians in the nearby town. 

Clint, Nat, and Steve had the role of securing the facility, including disabling any vehicles, and taking any and all scientists or other support staff into custody to be dealt with by SHIELD. 

The recon info provided to them by SHIELD hadn’t been clear about whether or not all of the staff on-site were complicit in, or even aware of, the shady nature of what went on behind closed doors. The people in charge had gone to great lengths to make the lab seem legitimate, in order to fly under the radar, so they had to be careful to separate the hostiles from the human shields. 

Which was where things went wrong for Clint. Most of the personnel in the facility had cooperated, with relatively minimal complaint, and now he was searching for any stragglers, clearing each room and workspace one by one. He was about halfway through his section when he found someone cowering behind a lab bench. 

“Hey there,” Clint called out. “You wanna come out from there?”

The lab tech tried to wedge himself even further under the bench. “I swear, I had no idea about anything going on in here. It was all above my paygrade. My job was just to clean the equipment and prepare basic supplies. Anything that happened after that, I know nothing about.” 

“That’s fine, not important right now. What matters is getting you out of here safely, everything else will be sorted out somewhere without who-knows-what-sort of biohazards lurking around.”

The tech shuffled his way forward and stood. 

“Funny you should mention that,” he said and popped open a test tube Clint hadn’t seen clutched in his hand, and threw whatever was in the tube right in Clint’s face. Wary of any other surprises this guy might have up his sleeve, Clint wrestled him to the floor easily enough and kept him pinned while he commed the rest of the team. 

“I’ve got a situation here. I found a tech in one of the labs, but he didn’t want to come quietly. He had a test tube full of something in his hand, and he threw it at me. So, be prepared for anyone else you find to fight dirty, even if they claim to not be in on it.”

“Hawkeye, please confirm: you’ve been exposed to an unknown substance, and you have one hostile contained?” Cap sounded more concerned than he usually allowed himself to be in the field. That was probably not a good sign. 

“Yep, that’s about the size of it.”

“Banner, Iron Man, what’ve you got so far? How much danger is Hawkeye potentially in?” Cap demanded. 

“Please tell me it’s good news,” Clint couldn’t stop himself from chiming in. 

“From everything I’ve seen so far, it looks like these assholes have mostly been working with viruses. Anything more than that, you’ll have to ask Bruce,” Tony said. 

“They were working on just about everything from smallpox to the common cold here- I can’t tell you anything without more information. Did the tube have a label on it?” Bruce asked. 

“Nope, nothing. I’m in lab C-3, if that helps narrow it down.”

“I’ll see what I can dig up from their records,” Tony said. 

“How are you feeling, Hawkeye? Any symptoms yet?” Bruce asked.

“I feel okay physically, for what it’s worth, but I’m extremely pissed off with this stupid asshole who decided I get to be his newest test subject, and I’m really worried that it’s gonna do something horrifying, like melt my face off.” 

That… that was far more honest than Clint had meant to be, but Tony interrupted his thoughts before he could figure out why he’d blurted that out.

“I’ve got good news and bad news. From what I’m seeing in their files, in that particular lab they weren’t working on anything terrifyingly face-melting, your good looks are safe. The bad news, however, is that what they were working on in there is viruses aimed at the central nervous system, particularly the brain.”

There was silence over the comms as no one seemed to know what to say. Until Clint broke it with “aww, virus, no.” 

That was all it took to snap Cap back into team leader mode. “Right. Let’s operate under the assumption that we’re dealing with a serious threat in this virus. There’s no such thing as too careful when it comes to the risks these so-called scientists are willing to take in their research. Banner, what are our next steps?”

“I’ve already contacted SHIELD, and asked them to send a Hazmat team with the medics, ETA 20 minutes. Clint and that lab tech both need to be kept isolated, at least until we know exactly what was in that turn, and how it might spread.”

“Widow, status? The quicker we get the building cleared the better- the medics can’t do their things for Clint until the threats are dealt with.”

“Don’t worry, Cap. While you boys were busy talking I was picking up the slack. My section is clear, and I made my way through the second half of Hawkeye’s as well. I all but rolled out the red carpet for them.”

Her tone was lighthearted, and anyone who didn’t know her as well as Clint could have been forgiven for thinking she didn’t care about the potential danger he was facing, but Clint knew better. Flippancy like that was how she hid her worries. 

What Clint meant to say was something flippant, pretending to have his feelings hurt by Natasha’s show of disinterest. The words that came out of his mouth instead were a way too honest plea for someone to tell him everything was going to be okay.

“Medics will be there soon,” Bruce said. “Alert us immediately if you start to develop any symptoms. 

“Uhh, now that you mention it…”

“What’s wrong?” The four voices of his teammates overlapped as they all asked the same question. 

“Somehow, I think I’m being forced to only say stuff that’s true. I can’t lie, or exaggerate, or anything.”

“Tell the medics to get their asses in there now! No excuses!” Cap shouted over the comms. It was rare to hear him lose his cool like that, but it wasn’t like Clint could throw stones- he was close to losing his too.

\---

Because no one had any way of knowing how the virus Clint was exposed to would progress, it was decided that he would be transferred to the local hospital to be monitored in one of their isolation rooms. The whole point of taking down these assholes had been to prevent them from spreading their fancy new viruses to the general population, which meant Clint couldn’t be allowed to become an infection vector. 

SHIELD's Hazmat team had set up a decontamination station at one of the exits to the facility, and Clint had been forced to have a very cold and miserable shower before being given scratchy disposable scrubs to wear for the journey to the hospital. 

At least he was alone in the decon shower. Whatever was going on with the virus involved him being unable to lie, and he wasn’t keen to find out if it would force him to voice whatever he was thinking on top of answering questions honestly. He made a point of not perving on his teammates in the gym, but there was a distinct lack of body modesty amongst his fellow Avengers, at least in the men’s locker room. 

Going through boot camp had beaten any self consciousness out of Steve, even before his transformation into the Star Spangled Man. Bruce tended to wake up nude in some weird places post-Hulk, while Thor just didn’t seem to understand ‘Midgardian cultural taboos’. And as for Tony, well. It was pretty obvious why he’d been named People’s ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ more than once. 

As he was escorted to the isolation room that he would be stuck in until a cure was found, Clint couldn’t help but whine to himself about how unfair it was that when something like this happened to one of the Avengers, it was almost always him who copped it. Steve was a super soldier with above average resistance to toxic substance, and an unnatural healing rate to boot. No matter how ‘puny’ Bruce was as a human, Hulk seemed to make him immune to everything too. Thor wasn’t human, and Tony had the Iron Man armour to protect him. Natasha was a baseline human like him, but she was far too terrifying to let anything injure her like Clint regularly managed. 

A group of doctors and nurses were there waiting for him, covered head to toe in protective equipment. There was a flurry of activity as they hooked him up to all sorts of monitors, and jabbed and swabbed him to take samples to be analysed. He could tell some of them were getting annoyed with having to repeat themselves several times when they asked him to move this way, or shift his arm that way; but between their unfamiliar accent and the masks hiding their mouths, it was a real struggle to understand what they were asking him. 

Not that he blamed them for wanting not to catch this damn virus- he wasn’t exactly having the time of his life blurting out whatever was in his mind whenever someone asked a question. 

The small amount of progress Bruce and Tony had made on solving the problem basically amounted to confirmation of what they had all suspected anyway- the virus was effectively a truth drug, making its victims unable to lie. There had been more medical mumbo-jumbo as the doctors explained it to him, about which parts of the brain must be involved and stuff, but Clint was having a hard enough time understanding them through their masks to bother with the specifics. It made no difference to him if it was his prefrontal cortex or his thalamus, he’d leave that to the brainiacs in the lab. 

Tomorrow would be a day full of every test and scan they could think to put him through, which left him alone for the rest of the evening, stuck in the small isolation room. Usually after a mission with SHIELD or an Avengers call out he’d work off any lingering adrenaline on the range with his bow, but that wasn't an option. The doctors had told him to get as much rest as possible, but he was still far too keyed up from the mission to try to sleep yet. 

This morning, before the urgent request for assistance came in from SHIELD, he’d been making plans with Tony to have a movie marathon of the worst sci-fi flicks JARVIS could dredge up for them. It felt like weeks ago they’d been talking over breakfast, not this morning. It hadn’t been a date, because there was no way a billionaire playboy like Tony would ever be interested like that in Clint, but he’d been looking forward to it anyway- he’d take any excuse to spend more time with the man he was in love with. 

He must have drifted off at some point, because the next thing he knew he was rudely awoken, far too early. What was worse than being awake at the ridiculous hour of eight am outside of an emergency was that no one was at least polite enough to bring him coffee. 

It was a scenario that repeated over the next several days. Clint would be dragged out of bed to be tested and scanned, poked and prodded. He was put through MRIs and CT scans, and hooked up to an EEG. Then the tests were repeated while he tried, and failed, to lie. It was like something out of that Jim Carrey movie, Liar Liar. Staring at a pen, unable to describe it as anything other than blue, regardless of whether he tried to say the words, or write it down, or even point to the wrong answer.

The doctors all found whatever the scans showed to be endlessly fascinating, but the novelty had long worn off for Clint. The communication difficulties had moved beyond being a minor frustration to impacting the way the tests were being run. The first solution tried had been using someone from outside the isolation, and therefore not wearing a mask, to relay instructions via video call, but the quality of the audio and visual feeds meant it wasn’t any easier for him to understand. 

Getting in a translator wasn’t an easy proposition either. Because they weren’t in North America, the Sign translators weren’t ASL. The only one of the Avengers who had known him long enough to become fluent in ASL was Natasha; the others had all started learning, but none were capable of saying more than ‘hello, ny name is’ just yet. During her first stint as translator for him, she told him about the reticence some of the hospital staff had about allowing her in, because they considered the risk of exposure risk too high, but no one was willing to tell the Black Widow ‘no’, especially when there weren’t any better options to suggest.

On day 4 of isolation he had a video call from Bruce, giving him a report on their progress in finding a cure. Natasha took the call as a chance to get lunch for herself, because she couldn’t exactly eat with him while wearing a mask. 

“How are you holding up?” Bruce asked. 

“I’m getting frustrated.” Clint still wasn’t used to the unintentional honesty this stupid virus kept pulling from him, and he hated it.

“I’m sorry I don’t have better news for you yet. Tony and I are working as fast as we can, but AIM 2.0 weren’t exactly following standard documentation processes, or working in controlled conditions. Before we can figure out how to undo it, we have to understand what they were doing in the first place.”

“It’s not you I’m annoyed at, Bruce. It’s just hard being stuck here in isolation when everyone who comes to see me has their face hidden behind a surgical mask.”

“Of course.” Bruce looked like he wanted to smack himself in the face. “And of course Natasha can’t be there all the time to translate for you.”

“Yeah, it’s okay when she’s in here, but she has to eat, and sleep, and pee, and stuff. Plus it’s not fair to expect her to sit in here all day with nothing to really do.”

“I’m sure Tony can figure something out for you,” Bruce said. “It shouldn’t be too hard to set up a connection to JARVIS on that tablet, then he can translate for you on the screen, like closed captions.”

“I don’t want to talk to Tony directly- make sure that doesn’t happen, Bruce,” Clint begged at the same time as Tony said something about being one step ahead.

On the video feed, Bruce looked like he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. Not that Clint could blame him- he was feeling the same way. 

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I didn’t realise he was right there with you. You could have at least warned me.”

“Well, he’s gone now,” Bruce said sheepishly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realise it would be a problem. I thought you and Tony got on well, did you have a fight about something?”

Clint thumped his head back against the pillows. “No, that’s not the problem, we do get along. That’s sort of the problem. I don’t want to talk to him while I can’t lie, because if I do, I’ll say too much and wreck it.”

“Ah,” was thankfully all Bruce had to say about Clint’s predicament. Before the silence could get (even more) awkward, JARVIS interrupted to inform Bruce that one of the tests he’d been waiting for had finished running. 

“It’s okay, doc. Go do whatever you’ve gotta do. The sooner you figure it out the sooner I can get the hell out of here.”

Clint wasn’t left alone to mope for long. Natasha had always been able to read him like a book, and the instant she walked into the room she knew something was up. “What’s with the long face?”

“I fucked up.”

She looked pointedly around the room. “Nothing looks broken, so you’re going to have to be more specific. How on earth did you fuck up in the half hour I was gone?”

“Bruce called to tell me about how they were going. I didn’t realise Tony was right there next to him, able to hear everything I was saying.”

Even behind the mask she was wearing, Clint could see Natasha’s wince. “Okay, I’m beginning to see where this is going. What exactly did you say?”

“Bruce said something about getting Tony to make something to give me subtitles, ‘cos you can’t always be in here to sign for me.”

“And?”

“And then I panicked and told him to make sure Tony couldn’t talk directly to me while I’m all Mr Honesty Hour.”

“Let me guess- he assumed the worst, and you didn’t correct him.”

“Well, it’s not like telling him the truth would have gone any better. There’s no way he’s interested in me, and it would just have made things awkward. Which is why I didn’t want to talk to him in the first place.”

“You’ve certainly painted yourself into a corner, haven’t you? Do you want my advice?”

Clint nodded.

“Tell him. Before they find a cure, or your immune system fights this off on its own. Because the only other option is letting Tony think you hate him.”

“Well, when you put it like that.” 

Nat patted him on the arm. “I’ll leave you to think about it.”

Clint knew she was right. Before this, telling Tony he was in love with him carried the risk of rejection, and with it the possibility of stuffing up the friendship he had with Tony, which he didn’t want to lose. But now that he’d gone and opened his stupid mouth, the choice became a lot simpler. If he said nothing he would definitely lose Tony completely, and the thought of that was worse than being rejected.

Apparently they had run out of ideas for new tests to put him through for now, which meant it was surprising when Nat made her way back into his room. He’d been watching random shows of Netflix when she entered, and rudely snatched his tablet out of his hands. 

“Hey!”

She handed over an identical looking replacement, and said “Tony made some modifications to this one.” As she spoke, the words appeared on the screen like live subtitles. 

“This is amazing,” he said, and watched as his words showed up in purple, a nice contrast to Nat’s dark red. It wasn’t just the program Clint was describing- Tony himself was an amazing person for putting this together for him so quickly, especially when he probably still thought Clint hated him because he had no brain-mouth filter.

“This is why I love him.”

Clint didn’t hear it when Tony reacted, but apparently the tablet did, because in hot-rod red it showed Tony as saying “what the fuck!”

“Not again,” Clint groaned. He really needed to start checking who else was around to hear him over open audio channels. 

“We haven’t found a cure yet, have we?” It displayed next. “Clint- prove you haven’t spontaneously recovered.”

“How?” It was weird to be having half a conversation that was half text, half vocal, via a tablet, when neither of them could see the other. 

“I don’t know, say something nice about the food here.”

“Hospital food sucks,” he said instead.

Tony was laughing, according to the subtitles. “Well, that’s definitely true. Which means the other thing you said had to be true too. And I can’t exactly prove it in the same way, but. I love you too.”

“Tell Bruce to hurry the fuck up and find a cure so I can get out of here and finally kiss you.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was somewhat inspired by my recent experiences at work as someone who is HoH. A lot of my customers are wearing masks lately, which makes it difficult for me to understand some of them when masks muffle voices and prevent lip-reading, especially on top of customers with strong accents and/or who mumble. 
> 
> I deliberately chose not to specify a location, other than not North America, because I didn't want to single out any one accent. Understanding accents gets easier with familiarity, and based on experience I can manage fairly well with American accents because I'm exposed to them through TV/movies, but Americans can have trouble understanding me.


End file.
